Abortion is a hot topic these days. Conservatives are doing everything they can to get it banned. To make it so if a woman gets pregnant her onlie solutions are to be pregnant or try to obtain an illegal (and therefore probablie unsafe) abortion.

I’ve always had opinions on abortions, because I have opinions on the value of a woman’s life. I think my life, and by extension, all women’s lives and goals are important. An unwanted child can make those lives difficult to impossible and those goals unacheivable.

We live in a culture that wants to punish women for having sex. It’s said so often that no one even thinks of the justice in the statement, “If she didn’t want to be pregnant she shouldn’t have had sex.” Because women should be punished for sex, but men should be praised.

And no one who says that the life of a fetus matters, and wants to ban abortions to protect that life values the life of women. I recentlie gave birth. And I love my child, but I am in my thirties and I planned to have that child. It was not forced on me.

A child is a lot of work, but let’sjust pretend you’re forced to give birth to a child you don’t want and then you put it up for adoption. You’ve still have to go through a pregnancie and labor. Should we talk about maternal mortality statistics in this country? The risk of death or disability goes up if you’re poor. Can we talk instead about the work of being pregnant?

It’s natural. Your body is supposed to do that. I was nauseated every day for 12 weeks. I threw up at least once a day, but don’t worry, that’s normal. Some women experience that AND WORSE every day of their TEN MONTH pregnancy. (10 months? you say. I thought it was onlie 9. Well that’s just a pleasant lie that someone tell you.)

So settle in for your 40 weeks of torture because you had sex once and this is what you DESERVE. It’s not torture? So lets take some prisoners and force them to be nauseated for 12 weeks. Lets make them vomit once a day minimum. Then lets have them put on 40 pounds in under a year. Lets double the fluid volume in their body. Lets give them diabetes and high blood pressure. Oh? That would be cruel and unusual?

No shit Sherlock.

Pregnancie is not a beautiful blissful thing. It’s work. Say you’re an athletic young woman who rides her bike to work. Now it hurts just to stand. Maybe you alreadie have health problems, their about to get worse. Your stomach muscles will tear. The bones of your hips will shift. Your feet will swell.

And everyone you know will treat you like a child. Should you be permitted to carry things heavier than ten pounds, you adorable little thing? Can you reallie manage that all on your own you precious duck you? Now imagine you’re fat and you’re in pain and you’re about to go through some seriouslie rough HOURS of pain because someone said you should be punished because you had sex once.

We wouldn’t let pregnancie happen to a murder, but a woman? Women are worthless and so are their lives. They aren’t doing anything better. That’s what anit abortion legislation says. I have a dutie to this babie they tell me. What is their dutie to me? What am I as a fully functioning adult owed?

So I am forced to give birth to this child and I lost my job because parental leave isn’t a thing. Oh and I didn’t have sick days either. Also I’m thousands of dollars in debt because healthcare in this country in horrifying. So Now i’m jobless and in debt. So I ask for assistance. And it never comes because we hate freeloaders in this country. And I can’t look for jobs because I have no one to watch my child. And I finallie get one and my child is sick but i can’t do anything about it because I’m choosing between food, rent and doctor’s bills. And some well meaning day care worker calls CYA and they take my child.

And this is the worst part. Here I am standing in the ruins of my life without the child that I’ve fallen in love with and knowing there is no good way forward.

This isn’t every woman’s storie, but for it to ANY woman’s storie is a crime. You want to say that abortion is murder? FOrcing an unwilling woman to carry a pregnancie to term and labor for a child is worse than murder. You take her Independence. You steal her choices. You destroy her body. And then you leave her. You tell her that every bad thing in her life is her fault. And even worse, you tell her she’s not worthie of ANY good things.

That’s what anti abortion laws do. They steal the humanitie from women and give it to a pile of cells that can’t survive without her. They take a person with hopes and dreams and goals and turn her into something only good for incubating.

A child IS a beautiful thing. But so are the adults those children grow into. There are plenty of pregnancies in this world that are planned, or if unplanned, still wanted. Don’t force pregnancie on people. It’s inhumane.